‘Art is a great tool to fight daily stress’

The dark bold strokes in her works are indicative of the influence Chinese art has had on her. Quite expected because artist Deepali Jain spent over a decade in Hong Kong, learning and practicing Chinese ink paintings. “I was literally drawn towards these paintings,” says Jain, fresh from her first solo show, The Destination that concluded at India Habitat Centre yesterday.

On display was a collection of paintings, depicting the cities she stayed in or travelled to, like Jodhpur, Udaipur, Benaras, Puducherry, Venice and other cities of Europe, over the last three years. Her works, both abstracts and semi-abstracts, showcase vibrant and rich blues, yellows and reds. “I love vibrant colours. This [the artworks] is my style of keeping a diary,” she says, adding that after her numerous travels, people and places from any part of the world are quite similar.

“In spite of each place’s uniqueness, the whole world is just the same. The same sunset, the same sunrise, the same city, the same village… The ultimate destination is within, instead of outside,” she says, a trifle philosophically, drawing from her own bitter-sweet experience of life and of having battled cancer.

Early life

Born into a family of art connoisseurs, Jain was exposed to art since she can remember. Her father sold ivory and sandalwood artifacts, which ensured a regular stream of artisans coming to her home. “As a child, I wondered how those artisans could turn wood into beautiful art objects.” So she created her own art pieces using found objects from broken bangles to pulses.

In 1995, Jain joined JD Institute of Fashion Designing and designed clothes for the next three years. “My biggest high came when model Namrata Shirodkar walked the ramp wearing my designs. I was just 19 then. But then I got married and moved to Hong Kong, I left fashion designing behind.” She considers this a blessing in disguise as it was in Hong Kong that she got introduced to Chinese ink painting in 1999.
“I was mesmerised at how those artists could present the essence of a place or a thing just through their brush strokes,” says Jain, who joined Hong Kong Art Centre in 2000 to learn Xieyi (freehand) style of ink painting under Foo Sai Heng, that continued learning it till she left Hongkong in 2011.

Cancer strikes

On moving back to India, Jain was diagnosed with colon cancer and doctors gave very little hope of her survival. That was when Jain plunged into art wholeheartedly. “Those two years were very tough. So I joined the Gurugram branch of the Delhi Collage of Art, and started learning different forms of art, one after the other.”

Art had a therapeutic affect on her, and while medicines healed her physically, art did so psychologically. “While drawing and painting, I would completely forget the disease I was battling with,” she says.

After she was completely cured of the big C, she took up art as a profession. She also volunteered as an art therapist at Max Cancer Hospital in Lajpat Nagar, Delhi. Twice a month she holds workshops for cancer patients at the hospital. Jain also teaches art at her studio in Gurugram, where her students are between 8 to 50 years. “Art is a great tool to fight daily stress. l and I want others to benefit from it too. I get a great deal of satisfaction from helping others.”